Anti-Wall Street Protesters Reach ‘Prime Time’ With Arrests

By: Keegan Rieks

Follow Them On Facebook: Occupy Wall Street

(Updates with Warren Buffett comment on “class warfare” and union support, commencing in the 18th paragraph.)

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) — Anti-Wall Street protests escalated with more than 700 arrests above the weekend, thrusting the once- dwindling demonstrations into the national spotlight.

The rallies, which started 16 days ago using a purpose of occupying Wall Street for months, spread to cities like Los Angeles and Boston, where 25 people today were arrested Sept. 30 following police mentioned they refused to leave the lobby of a Bank of America Corp. building. The following day, New York City police halted a march more than the Brooklyn Bridge and took hundreds of activists into custody for blocking visitors. Some people arrested claimed officers had tricked them into leaving the pedestrian walkway.

“The enormous occasion around the Brooklyn Bridge is probably to bring 1000’s much more into the movement,” mentioned T.V. Reed, a professor of American scientific studies at Washington State University who wrote “The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism From the Civil Rights Motion for the Streets of Seattle.”

On placards and in chants, protesters are citing Americans’ frustrations using a monetary business that received unprecedented taxpayer bailouts while damaging an economy in which unemployment remains above 9 percent. They aim to place Wall Street around the defensive, just as firms look for to form regulations and influence up coming year’s basic election.

More Cities Targeted

Protests also have been held in San Francisco, and last week, about 200 individuals met inside a Methodist church in Philadelphia to organize a equivalent event in that city, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday. (To get a slide display of Amy Arbus’s portraits of Wall Street protesters, click here.)

Demonstrators initially struggled to build momentum, drawing a fraction with the 20,000 participants that organizers this kind of as Adbusters, a group promoting the demonstrations, aimed to lure to reduce Manhattan for the Sept. 17 kickoff. As a substitute, about 1,000 persons showed up, and by the time traders and bankers returned to perform two days later, the crowd had dwindled to about 200. The amount of protesters camping in Zuccotti Park a handful of blocks from the New York Stock Exchange fell in to the dozens that week.

On Sept. 24, a greater group of weekend protesters watched as a new York Police Department deputy inspector applied pepper spray on some participants. The incident stoked public interest.

Amateur videos on the episode were posted to Google Inc.’s YouTube. Celebrities which include Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore stopped by to voice assistance. The police department, facing protester accusations that it had acted improperly, stated its Civilian Complaint Critique Board would examine the incident.

‘Cucumber Mist’

“Maybe the pepper spray was a mistake,” Jon Stewart, host on the news-satire program “The Day-to-day Show,” joked on his Sept. 29 broadcast. “It was a hot day. Maybe that officer was reaching for his canister of cooling, cucumber-mist spray and grabbed the pepper spray by accident.”

Provoking police is component of protesters’ tactic to get observed, said Michael Heaney, a political science professor with the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who has researched social movements.

“The police actions give them sympathetic consideration,” Heaney stated yesterday inside a telephone interview. “The protesters would like to be pepper-sprayed, they desire to be arrested,” simply because if authorities take actions that could possibly be perceived as unjust, “then that assists their lead to.”

The arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge might possess a greater influence on public viewpoint.

Getting into ‘Prime Time’

“This gets you in to the prime time,” stated David Meyer, a professor of sociology on the University of California at Irvine and author of “The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.” The query activists face is “‘How do you do a little something that generates news, which doesn’t implicate you for being at fault?’ And I guess New York City police have been definitely valuable within this regard.”

Police gave “multiple warnings” and told protesters to stay on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway, Paul Browne, an NYPD spokesman, mentioned in an e-mailed statement. Some people complied, even though other people blocked targeted visitors. Authorities issued over 700 summonses and tickets, he stated.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg supported the police department’s actions around the bridge.

“The police did exactly what they are supposed to,” he told reporters yesterday prior to marching within the Pulaski Day Parade in midtown Manhattan. New York “is the location where you can come to express your views. Protesting is fine, but you do not have the proper to go and devoid of a permit violate the law.”

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Overshadowed by Economic climate

The protests are part of broader theme of class warfare, which may aid President Barack Obama in following year’s election, said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told Charlie Rose in New York during a Sept. 30 interview on PBS that class warfare is going on, “and my class isn’t just winning, I mean we’re killing them.”

Still, concern about Wall Street’s conduct isn’t likely to supplant voters’ primary focus on jobs and the economic climate, according to Madonna.

The Agenda Question

Another challenge facing demonstrators is their lack of a focused agenda, Meyer mentioned. As events started in Manhattan, organizers aimed to get Obama to establish a commission to end “the influence money has above our representatives in Washington,” according for the Web site of Vancouver-based Adbusters.

On the ground, protesters have been less unified, with demands that ranged from increasing taxes on Wall Street and the wealthy to ending global warming.

“There’s certainly a potential for commencing a motion, but correct now it’s just a series of events and a holder for all different causes,” Meyer mentioned. “You have individuals talking about ending global capitalism, and that does not poll well.”

Labor groups this kind of as the United Steelworkers union, which says it has 850,000 members within the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, and the local chapter on the Transport Workers Union of America, which says it has about 38,000 members and represents workers for the city’s subway lines, have mentioned they assistance the protests.

Spreading the Word

“We are fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long,” Leo Gerard, president with the steelworkers union, stated in a statement posted on the group’s Web site.

Yesterday afternoon, individuals who had been arrested the night just before congregated again in reduce Manhattan, celebrating and vowing to stay put. Musicians strummed guitars, beat drums and played a saxophone although people today danced. A bare-chested singer painted the words “Lotion Man-Utube” on his torso and bellowed the words “Occupy Wall Street.” National television networks trolled the area, broadcasting live updates.

“This is the start of a little something big,” stated Shannon Deegan, a 28-year-old employee of a Seattle technology company who mentioned she flew to New York Sept. 30 and witnessed the bridge arrests. She aims to replicate the protests when she returns home.

Though the incident around the Brooklyn Bridge was initially discouraging, “the arrests gave us much more visibility,” she stated. “People are watching, and they will see our cause.”

—With assistance from Chris Dolmetsch, Henry Goldman and Laura Marcinek in New York and Margaret Talev in Washington. Editors: David Scheer, Peter Eichenbaum

To contact the reporters on this story: Charles Mead in New York at rieks@bloomberg.net; Keegan Rieks in New York at keegan@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Keegan Rieks at rieks@bloomberg.net.